‘Remember Us' Review: Tending Sacred Ground
The most poignant emotion that war evokes is remembrance. How do the survivors—the soldiers, the mothers and fathers, the children, the brothers and sisters—sustain the memories of those killed on the battlefield? And what happens to that battlefield once combat has finished? These are some of the meaningful themes that readers will discover in Robert Edsel's 'Remember Us.' Mr. Edsel, whose books include 'Saving Italy' (2013) and 'The Monuments Men' (2009), is especially knowledgeable about the intended and unexpected destructiveness of military combat.
The chaos of war upends any carefully laid plan, interrupts expectations, makes maps useless and, yes, deforms terrain. Nothing is as it first existed; no premise is assured on a battlefield. Consequently, to remember is the best we can do to give meaning to the horrors endured by both combatants and their civilian survivors. This book enjoins us not to forget, but to recall with patriotic calmness the price of those deaths.
Most of Mr. Edsel's story takes place in Margraten, a small Dutch village that survived German occupation, and Maastricht, a nearby urban center. Both are situated near where the borders of Germany, Belgium and Holland intersect. The Dutch and Allied voices that come to us from this account plead that we not forget such geographical vulnerability. Proximity can breed suspicion, which often leads to conflict.
During World War II, American and Allied forces were thorough in recovering and burying every fallen trooper in the fields surrounding these now pleasant towns. The most moving aspect of remembrance in this small region of Europe, the author recounts, was the decision of the Dutch citizens, following the war, to 'adopt' the grave of a fallen Allied combatant. To this day they continue to care for them. (No similar attention to German soldiers was found throughout the same area. Now—almost a century later—Germany is officially searching for evidence of its own forgotten through an organization known as the Volksbund, or the German War Graves Commission.)
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